A couple weeks ago, USC was making national headlines unrelated to football: a fraternity had circulated been forwarded an e-mail that exemplified fraternity
a private
culture at its worse. Then, a member
from the same fraternity chose to live up to this mantra by having sex on the
tallest building on campus.
Oh, and the school was renamed after some rich couple who have very
alliterative names. Dana and David
Dornsife College is not just a “historic gift” ““ it’s a tongue twister. The new school tagline should be “Say it
five times fast.”
Of course, these scandals were compounded by the “Asian Rant” controversy
at cross-town rival and frenemy-in-shame, UCLA.
Even though most of these stories did not paint the university in a favorable
light, it’s always fun being the center of attention (unless you’re also being
photographed).
More importantly, the previously unknown news that misogyny exists in
fraternities gave students the perfect opportunity to care about
something. Many students even
protested. When I first walked by the
protest, I thought people were shouting, “Hey hey, ho ho, Gaddafi has got
to go.” It was hard to hear because
of the UN worker asking me to donate money to refugee camps. I was pleasantly surprised to realize they
were saying, “…misogyny has got to
go.” Yes, this controversy gave us
not only great conversation starters, but a universal purpose not seen since they
tried to limit hours at Tro-Gro. Those
were the days.
As quickly as news and the causes that come with them arise, new Lady Gaga
songs are leaked. What seemed so
important quickly becomes irrelevant.
People stopped talking about the Japanese tsunami before they could even
re-remake “We Are the World.”
USC students were experiencing moral indignation that can only be caused by
re-tweets and Huffington Post articles.
This high caused them to demand that something be done. Now, because everyone is over it ““ it’s as if
the controversy never happened. So, if students really care about solving the
issue of misogyny in the Greek system, they should partake in more scandalous activity. There are plenty more locations waiting to be
desecrated ““ that ridiculously narrow walkway at Jefferson/McClintock for
instance. Student Affairs should
encourage bad behavior instead of pretending to investigate the situation
alongside the perpetrators. Because if
there aren’t more high profile incidents, things will go back to the way they
were when nothing was wrong at all.
